In magnetic read and/or write systems, due to the introduction of noise from adjacent tracks, data tracks written more narrowly than a nominal track width can be difficult or impossible to read using a read head, the active length (that is, extent laterally of the track) of which is specified for reading nominally wider data tracks. Variations in environmental conditions, for example in temperature, humidity and/or vibration, can cause the width and/or position of data elements written to a data storage medium to vary significantly from nominal. Effects of tolerances, wear, and/or quality variations of a read/write drive mechanism and/or media cartridge may also contribute to overly narrow and/or wandering data tracks. Read problems can be exacerbated in the case of removable storage media that may be written and read by different respective drives.
Relatively narrowly written data can be nominally specified in some cases, for example to obtain high capacity data storage using multiple data tracks concurrently written by a multiple element transducer head. For multiple parallel data tracks, the outer tracks can be unduly affected by media expansion and/or contraction effects, which in some cases can take the outer tracks out of range of the outer read elements of a transducer head unless the outer tracks are narrowly written relative to other tracks. This situation can introduce complexity in designing a drive for a high capacity data storage format that can also read formats requiring relatively wide read heads for all tracks.